Top 50 Cloud Statistics in 2024 (Essential Insights on Investments, Breaches, Misconfigurations, and More)

In the fast-changing world of cloud computing, it’s essential for both organizations and professionals to keep up with the latest trends and statistics. Cloud technology has revolutionized how businesses run, offering unmatched scalability, flexibility, and innovation.

But with these advancements come new challenges and risks. This blog post explores key cloud statistics in five important areas: data, security, breaches, misconfigurations, and financial investments.

By looking at the top 10 statistics in each section, we aim to give you a clear picture of current trends, help you foresee future developments, and guide you in making smart decisions for your cloud strategy.

Top 10 Cloud Data Statistics

1. According to Statista, there are 5,381 data centers in the United States as of March 2024. The most of any country worldwide.
2. According to Gartner, by 2027, more than 70% of organizations will use industry cloud platforms to accelerate their business initiatives.
3. According to Netskope 2024 Cloud and Threat Report, people’s interactions with cloud and SaaS apps are increasing by 35% per year.

4. According to Gartner, by 2026, 75% of organizations will adopt a digital transformation model that will take the cloud as the underlying platform.
5. According to Broadcom, organizations expect to more than double the number of public clouds they rely on from 2020 to 2027.
6. According to the 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity Report, 52% of companies globally will launch AI-driven cloud deployments in 2030, up 58% from 2024.
7. According to Statista, Amazon S3 led the global enterprise data storage software industry in 2024 with a market share of 22.98 percent.
8. Gartner reports that Cloud Application Services (SaaS) will lead worldwide public cloud services end-user spending in 2024, reaching $232.3 billion USD.
9. Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that 200 zettabytes of data will have been stored in the cloud by 2025. ⁷
10. According to Broadcom, only 20% of surveyed organizations are categorized as mature or cloud-smart. The rest is grappling with complexity.

Top 10 Cloud Security Statistics

11. According to the 2024 Thales Data Threat Report, Human factors are still a major cause of cloud data breaches, with user error as the leading cause at 31% and failure to apply Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to privileged accounts also a significant factor at 17%.

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12. According to Netskope, the top 10 phishing targets in the last year included popular cloud and SaaS applications, shopping sites, and banking portals.

13. According to the 2024 NetApp Cloud Complexity Report, “Increased Cybersecurity Risk” jumped 16% YoY while all other concerns decreased when asked, “What are the top business impacts of managing the increasing complexity of data across cloud or multi-cloud environments?”.
14. Fortinet reports that 96% of organizations are either moderately or extremely concerned about cloud security. Reflecting this priority, 61% of respondents expect their cloud security budgets to increase in the coming year.
15. According to Thales Group, Two-thirds of DTR respondents prioritized DevSecOps and cloud as their greatest emerging security concern.

16. The percentage of enterprises that agree or strongly agree that managing security in the cloud is more complex than on-premises has consistently grown from 46% in 2021 to 55% in the 2024 survey by Thales Group.
17. The most frequent security concerns raised by security practitioners while using public cloud apps were improper configuration (51%), resulting in loss of sensitive data (64%), and unauthorized access (51%).
18. IT and security professionals were asked how effective they thought their cloud provider’s security procedures were, and 89% said they were highly or somewhat effective. Just 19% of these individuals indicated they were highly confident in their organization’s capacity to protect sensitive data in the cloud when asked. 31% said slightly, and 44% said moderately.
19. According to the “Understanding Cloud Data Security and Priorities” report,
    • Only 4% of organizations report that 100% of their sensitive data in the cloud is sufficiently secured. In other words, 96% of companies report insufficient security for at least some sensitive cloud data.
    • 40% of organizations indicate that 50% or less of their sensitive data in the cloud has sufficient security.
    • Over half of organizations (57%) report medium to low levels of confidence in their organization’s ability to secure data in the cloud.

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20. According to the 2024 Thales Data Threat Report, Only 46% of respondents said that more than 40% of employees at their organization are using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for cloud-based applications.

Top 10 Cloud Breach and Risk Statistics

21. 80% of businesses report a rise in the frequency of cloud attacks:
    • Approximately 33% can be attributed to cloud data breaches.
    • 27% to environment intrusion attacks.
    • 23% to crypto mining.
    • 15% of attacks comprise failed audits.

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22. According to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 by IBM, about 40% of all breaches involved data distributed across multiple environments.
23. According to PwC’s findings from the 2024 Global Digital Trust Insights, the top companies taking cybersecurity measures seriously say their most damaging cyber breach in the last three years cost them less than $100k.
24. According to the Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 by IBM, 35% of breaches involved shadow data, showing the proliferation of data is making it harder to track and safeguard. In contrast, data stored in just 1 type of environment was breached less often, whether that environment was public cloud (25%), on-premises (20%), or private cloud (15%).
25. According to Palo Alto Networks, sensitive data in the cloud poses hidden risks. Sensitive data, such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), financial records, or intellectual property, are found in 66% of storage buckets and 63% of publicly exposed storage buckets.
26. According to PwC, the most damaging breaches that cost $1 million or more impact the Healthcare sector the most, with 47% of breaches.

27. According to Unit 42, the three causes that account for 60% of all exposures in cloud environments are
    • Web framework takeover (22.8%)
    • Remote access services (20.1%)
    • IT security and networking infrastructure (17.1%)
28. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of the codebases in production have unpatched vulnerabilities rated High or Critical (CVSS >= 7.0), and 11% of the hosts exposed in public clouds have High or Critical vulnerabilities.

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29. According to PwC, breaches are getting more and more expensive. Breaches in the band saw the biggest increase in 2024, while more expensive ones didn’t increase that much.

30. According to Palo Alto Networks, in most organizations’ cloud environments, 5% of the security rules trigger 80% of the alerts.

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Top 10 Mult-Cloud and Misconfiguration Statistics

31. According to the 2024 Thales Data Threat Report, Multicloud growth is flattening, but financial services firms are now slightly more multi-cloud (2.03 cloud providers on average) than the average enterprise survey-wide (2.02 cloud providers).
32. According to Fortinet, in 2024, a majority of organizations (78%) are opting for hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. Of those organizations, 43% use a hybrid of cloud and on-premises infrastructure, and 35% have a multi-cloud strategy.

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33. Misconfigured cloud systems account for over 23% of cloud security incidents, and 27% of enterprises reported security breaches in their public cloud infrastructure.
34. 95% of employees who have permits got them through excessive privilege.
35. Businesses appear to give partners, suppliers, contractors, and employees almost equal access to critical information. According to the organizations, 51–75% of the sensitive data was accessible to the following percentages of people:
    • Employees (29%)
    • Business or technology partners (27%)
    • Contractors (26%)
    • Suppliers (25%)

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36. 52% of enterprises with multi-cloud environments say it’s hard to create standardized security and governance guidelines across all the platforms.
37. Over 79% of businesses utilize several cloud providers, and as multi-cloud settings become more sophisticated, the number of cloud misconfigurations increases.
38. Compared to on-premises systems, 80% of security vulnerabilities were found in cloud environments because of a variety of issues such as frequent misconfigurations, shared responsibilities, shadow IT, an inherent connection to the internet, and a lack of visibility into cloud assets.
39. Fortinet states that 68% of issues arise due to misconfiguration.
40. According to SentinelOne, 89% of companies affected by improper cloud configurations were startups.

Top 10 Cloud Investment and Financial Statistics

41. According to Broadcom, 51% of Cloud Beginners and 97% of Cloud Smart organizations stated that their multi-cloud approach has had a positive impact on revenue growth in the last 12 months. Additionally, 34% of Cloud Beginners and 96% of Cloud Smart organizations said that the multi-cloud approach has had a positive impact on profitability in the last 12 months.
42. The top companies taking cybersecurity measures seriously invest more into the cyber budget, with 85% increasing their cyber budget in 2024 (vs 79% overall), of which 19% are increasing the cyber budget in 2024 by 15% or more, compared to 10% overall.

43. The amount of money that IT spends on public cloud services keeps growing. Global end-user spending on public cloud services is anticipated to reach $679 billion in 2024 and surpass $1 trillion by 2027.
44. According to Newzoo, cloud gaming’s target audience will almost triple between 2021 and 2025, edging ever closer to the half-billion mark.
45. According to Broadcom, if your organization is Cloud-Smart, it is 62% more possible for you to turn the data you have into money in 2024.

46. By 2025, end-user spending on SaaS applications on the cloud is predicted to reach 295,08 billion USD globally.
47. According to Statista, the top eight cloud infrastructure service providers control more than 80% of the market.
48. According to Infosys, improving speed to market and using the cloud to find new revenue sources can boost profit growth by as much as 11.2 percent year over year.
49. According to Newzoo, the cloud gaming market is projected to exceed $8 billion by 2025.
50. According to studies from Oracle and IDC, 40% of firms from developing nations are currently formulating their cloud plans.

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Conclusion

As cloud computing continues to advance, the importance of staying abreast of relevant statistics cannot be overstated.

The insights from these top 10 statistics across data, security, breaches, misconfigurations, and financial aspects reveal both the immense opportunities and the critical challenges inherent in the cloud environment. By leveraging this information, organizations can better navigate the complexities of cloud adoption, mitigate risks, and optimize their investments.

We also mentioned how our platform can help you take proactive measures against threat actors. SOCRadar platform provides real-time, actionable intelligence to help you proactively address emerging threats, optimize your security structures, and safeguard your data. By integrating our CTI solutions into your operations, you can avoid becoming a part of those numbers above.